I am a senior editor at Forbes, covering legal affairs, corporate finance, macroeconomics and the occasional sailing story. I was the Southwest Bureau manager for Forbes in Houston from 1999 to 2003, when I returned home to Connecticut for a Knight fellowship at Yale Law School. Before that I worked for Bloomberg Business News in Houston and the late, great Dallas Times Herald and Houston Post. While I am a Chartered Financial Analyst and have a year of law school under my belt, most of what I know about financial journalism, I learned in Texas.

Justices Skeptical Of Medicaid Coercion, All-Or-Nothing Arguments

Toward the end of his grueling, three-day stand before the U.S. Supreme Court, the nation’s top lawyer, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, was arguing against the claim that a vast expansion of Medicaid programs was coercive toward the states. Chief Justice John Roberts interrupted him to say “you have another 15 minutes.” “Lucky me,” Verrilli responded.

And that sums up the arguments on the last day of the Supreme Court hearings over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. The justices diligently pursued two questions tangential to the main one hanging over Obamacare, which is whether the mandate requiring individuals to buy health insurance is unconstitutional. But there was a strong sense everybody was marking time.

In today’s first session the question was whether the mandate could be separated from the rest of the law without destroying what Congress intended to do. Arguing against the proposition was former Solicitor General Paul Clement, representing the states opposed to the healthcare law. He faced constant and withering attacks from virtually all of the justices asking questions (Clarence Thomas, as usual, asked none), who asked how the court could strike down a 2,700-page law containing myriad other provisions including Indian health plans and the black lung disease program.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg summed up the view of most of the justices when she said: “It’s a choice between a wrecking operation, which is what you are requesting, or a salvage job. And the more conservative approach would be salvage rather than throwing out everything.”

A light moment came when Justice Antonin Scalia asked whether the justices would be required through the entire law looking for what to keep and what to throw out. Referring to the constitutional amendment prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment he asked: “What happened to the Eighth Amendment? You really want us to go through these 2,700 pages?”

On the coercion question, Clement again faced a skeptical court. The 26 states challenging the health reform law say the expansion of Medicaid is coercive because even though the federal government is paying 90% of the cost of enrolling new recipients, it also threatens to cut off all Medicaid recipients if the states refuse the deal.

Justice Elena Kagan tripped Clement up in his opening statement by asking whether it would still be coercion if the federal government paid 100%. Clement said yes, but Kagan disagreed. “The Federal government is here saying, we are giving you a boatload of money …It doesn’t sound coercive to me, I have to tell you.”

The arguments gave Justice Anthony Kennedy an opportunity to air what has become a key concern of his, the question of whether the federal government is usurping state power. Obamacare challengers hope to win the swing justice’s vote by convincing him the law takes away too much power from the states and individuals. Kennedy and other justices spent some time asking whether the Medicaid expansion places a wedge between voters and the health plan for the poor, by separating its funding from its administration.

“Do you think that there still is inherent and implicit in the idea of federalism, necessary for the idea of federalism, that there be a clear line of accountability so the citizen knows that it’s the Federal or the State government who should be held responsible for a program?” Kennedy asked Verrilli.

Kennedy also asked if it was proper for the court to excise the individual mandate and leave the rest of the law intact, since that would expose insurance companies to perhaps $350 billion in losses as they were forced to insure all comers without premium income from healthy individuals. Scalia also discussed how “legislative inertia” would leave Congress to leave the rest of the law intact because it couldn’t muster the 60 votes necessary to repeal it and start again.

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The fact that the Justice asks if he should have to read all 2,700 pages should concern everyone in the fact that the highest court in the land are implying that they haven’t read it. If they haven’t read it we should all be concerned because they are the final arbiter of Justice and yet have no idea what the bill actually says!

Why is this not concerning? Why is this not a bigger deal and why, as a citizen, should I trust the Judiciary who is currently showing negligence, the legislative that has shown gross incompetence or the executive who is a dyed in the wool liar “Military budget to allow permanent detention”?

I got through the first 700 pages and it seems that there is money for everyone except those who take care of themselves. It is a burden on pharma, health ins companies, and those who work and pay premiums. The weight of all of Obamas plans seem to be carried by the middle class to support his voter base.